Many devices have been made and patented dealing with the sport of exercising parts of the human body by lifting weights. These devices have been relatively complex requiring the use of pluralities of cables, pulleys, and levers, which, due to their construction, require that the exercise device be attached to walls or that there should be a permanent type of attachments of the device to the floor. In some cases large stable platforms must be constructed to set on the floor, the weight of the platform being such that it exceeds the weight and forces which are directly involved in the exercise. The reason these exercise devices must be attached to a wall or floor is that in many cases during usage, the devices exert forces in directions other than toward the floor and the magnitude of the exerted forces is greater than the weight of the device. This causes an imbalance in the device which renders the device unstable causing it to overturn or some other drastic result.
The commonly available bench rest to which the invention attaches is of the type that consists of a flat board, usually padded, having a pair of elongated pieces of tubing running the length of the bench, bending down to form a pair of legs at the bench rear portion, and at the other end, bending to turn on themselves in a "U" shaped to separately engage upright struts, the struts forming the front two legs and continuing on upward to attach to saddle shaped brackets to receive a weighted barbell. A weight exerciser will lay, back down, upon the bench with his feet on either side of the bench to the floor, his head generally between the upright struts, reaching up to grasp the barbell bar resting in the brackets, lifting same and then letting it down into the brackets.
The commonly available bench rest described above does not provide a great deal of different types of exercises, but yet it does provide a readily moveable nonpermanent type platform to hold a person's body for adaptation of other types of exercises providing the added equipment is devised where all forces that are exerted in utilizing the equipment are such that the equipment itself or the bench construction provides the resisting force and no connection is necessary to a floor or wall.
The inventors have invented another invention, which is the subject of a prior patent application, and which attaches to existing bench rests for exercising the arms and shoulder.
Thus it is apparent that there is need for a leg exercising device which is rather compact and portable and which does not depend upon attachment to floors or to walls to be used but which is in fact arranged so that the forces exerted by the device when in operation are such that attachment to walls and floors are not necessary and attachment to a bench rest may be made.